"We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable specticle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offense. They boast of their priviledges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder condition than servitude or death.

In our native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birthright and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it; for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves; against violence actually offered; we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when all hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before."

-Declaration of the Causes and the Necessity of Taking Up Arms (July 6, 1775)

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine ."

"The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management."

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."

"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

"Still one thing more, fellow citizens - a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government ." --Thomas Jefferson's 1st inagural address in 1801

"It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression, ... that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow,) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one."

"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will... become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery."

"Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master!"

"The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."

"A society that will trade a little order for a little freedom will lose both, and deserve neither."

"The tree of liberty, from time to time, must be replenished with the blood of patriots."

"Were we to be directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread."

"I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive ."

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, the banks and the corporations that will grow around them will deprive the people of all their property, first by inflation and then by deflation, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justistice cannot sleep forever."

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny

~Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union
or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as
monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be
tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
--Thomas
Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801.